Is Your Mobile Phone Funding Genocide In Congo?

Minerals that are used in the manufacturing of mobile phones are being used to finance the civil war in Democratic Republic of the Congo, which in the last 15 years has seen five-million people killed and 300,000 women raped.

DR Congo is rich in minerals such as tin, tantalum, tungsten that are all used in the manufacture of mobile phones. Armed groups are financed around £118 million a year through the sales of these 'blood minerals' to the western world, who then use them to manufacturer mobile phones.

If you ask a phone companies where their suppliers get their mineral from, they cannot guarantee that they aren't buying them from the Congo.

As well as the millions of people killed during the war, which is described as the most lethal since World War Two, there has also been mass rape throughout the DR Congo. Rape is used as a cheap and effective way to clear communities and gain control of the mines which contain these lucrative minerals. In the words of Amnesty International, "rape is cheaper than bullets."

Congo has been named as one of the most dangerous places in the world for a woman to live in because of the staggering levels in sexual violence. The United Nations even once described the country as the rape capital of the world.

This is now the subject for a new film called Blood in Mobile from Danish director Frank Poulsen, who goes to visit the mines controlled by armed groups and the appalling conditions in which people - including children - are forced to work in.

In the film, Poulsen successfully arranges a trip to a mine located deep in the jungles of Walikale where thousands of people, many of them children, were living and working in hellish conditions. At one point, Poulsen gives a camera to a small child to record the hellish conditions inside.

As Poulsen tries to connect the dots between what was happening in the Congo mines and the manufacturing of mobile phones, he approached Nokia and wondered what steps they were doing to improve the situation. Poulsen tried to arrange an interview with someone who could help him once a week for almost a year. He was fobbed off at every turn.

"Nokia had the chance of being the hero of this film, if they had opened up to me. It is a mystery why they didn't. But it also shows why this issue isn't being solved: people are turning a blind eye," Poulsen said in an interview in the Guardian.

According to the film's website, Blood in Mobile is a film about our responsibility for the conflict in the Congo and about corporate social responsibility.

Blood in Mobile is not the first film which tries to raise the issue of the use of 'blood minerals' in phones.

A hugely-graphic short film Unwatchable was released on the internet last month to highlight the campaign by Save the Congo.

Filmed by Michael Bonvillian, a Hollywood cinematographer whose work includes Cloverfield and Lost, it recreates the true story of a Congolese woman called Masika, who was gang-raped together with her daughters and was forced to eat her murdered husband's dismembered penis. In the film, Masika's story is set in an English village, with a British family being attacked by soldiers.

"With everything else that's going on in the world, it's too easy to dismiss what is going on in the Congo. This is a hard film to watch, but it is nothing compared to what is going on in the Congo on a daily basis," said Marc Hawker, who directed the short film.

"Our aim was to shatter the noise of everyday life and spearhead the campaign with a film that can't be ignored because the issue is so monstrous and unacceptable."

Blood in the Mobile is released on 21 October. You can view the film Unwatchable via the website http://www.unwatchable.cc/ .